[sbarre]

The elephant in the room here is that Apple forces you to use the Music app to manage/navigate/enjoy the music you have locally on your phone (I'm 90% sure I'm right about this).

They maintain a monopoly on that functionality, and therefore when they make decisions that don't align with your desires or expectations, you have no recourse. You can't just use a different app - on your own device - that suits you better.

If they opened this up to third-party apps, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

[kccqzy]

That doesn't sound correct to me. But when I go to privacy settings on my iPhone I see plenty of apps having been authorized by me to access my local music library. For example Google Maps has this permission, so that I can begin playback or change playlists right within a Maps navigation.

So at least Apple provides some kind of API to allow third parties to access your music library. I'm not just sure how extensive that API is.

[sbarre]

Thanks for clarifying, I didn't know this.

[lstamour]

Any app can save documents to local storage. As an example, I've 90GB of Spotify music on my phone, as I told it to download the entire "Liked songs" playlist. Google Play Music and YouTube Music also download to the phone. So no, you aren't forced to use Apple Music. You can even change Siri to use Spotify as a default in limited circumstances. It's not an iOS restriction the way independent browser implementations are restricted or how you can't set a default Mail app or Web Browser. There isn't even an iTunes app for syncing any more, so it's hard to argue that Apple has a giant advantage over third-parties ... except in how Apple gets a 30% cut of in-app subscriptions from third-parties, of course. And how asking Siri "What song is this?" always takes you to iTunes to buy it.

[pwinnski]

I'm 100% sure you're wrong about this.

For example, Marvis Pro exists. Heck, multiple web interfaces to Apple Music exist!

[sbarre]

Yes it was demonstrated that I was wrong, I tried to edit my comment but it was too late, so I added a reply to indicate it, and thanked the 4-5 people who came before you to indicate this as well. :-)

my bad.

[pwinnski]

I missed that. Sorry for piling on.

[herodotus]

No, this is not correct. I sell an App that lets you play music that is stored locally on your phone. Before you rush to get it though: it is restricted to Operas. It also lets you play cloud music in your library if you subscribe to iTunes Match.

[sbarre]

Thank you for clarifying that. I didn't realize this was possible.

While I am not into Opera, my dad is, and he has an iPhone.. can you share the name of your app, I bet he would be very interested.

[herodotus]

I should add, thou, that there is no way for a 3rd party app to support downloading your own iTunes library tracks from the cloud. You have to use Apple's music app to do that.

[sbarre]

I can't update my post anymore but I'll say that I am wrong in the above post. I appreciate everyone's constructive comments that educated me.